


Some Kind of Path

by gettingby



Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Blood Drinking, Dragon Simon Snow, Future Fic, Immortality, Kid Fic, M/M, Mentioned Character Death, Post-Book 2: Wayward Son, Vaguely sci-fi, deeply incorrect predictions of the future, simon is a dragon, tw: climate change
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-28
Updated: 2020-09-28
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:35:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26699128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gettingby/pseuds/gettingby
Summary: In the year 2217, a dragon wakes from his slumber.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton “Baz” Pitch/Simon Snow
Comments: 16
Kudos: 64





	Some Kind of Path

I wake up in a daze.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been asleep, but I think it’s been a while. My dreams have been long and elaborate. The dreams of hibernation.

It’s usually hard for me to stay asleep for so long. I run hot and the changes in the seasons can rouse me easily. It must have been especially peaceful. Or maybe I didn’t want to wake up from whatever I was dreaming of.

There’s an itch just below my skin, though. I can’t imagine staying asleep any longer. There’s something I need to do, something I’ve put off for far too long.

I go west.

*

I’d only been allowed at Watford because Davy made me his heir.

Everyone else came from a long line of illustrious Mages. Like me, Davy didn’t have any family. Unlike me, he had known his family. His parents died when he was a young man. They could do simple magic - but they weren’t powerful enough to attend Watford.

I idolised Davy. He was a pioneer in this strange world of society etiquette and upper class cabals. He had been a stranger like me and made his way to the top. And when he did, he opened Watford’s gates to all who had been denied. 

He had achieved so much. He saw himself in me, and he pushed me to be twice as good as everyone else, but that was impossible. My magic was out of control.

Still, no one could deny that I was powerful.

*

I’m not sure exactly where I’m going when I rise into the clouds and fly toward the sunset. I just know that I’m being drawn there, and I can’t resist any longer. 

I fly at night so that I won’t be spotted. In the day I stop at gas stations and out-of-the-way diners to eat and piss. I don’t sleep. I don’t feel tired anymore.

I follow the stars. When I’m far enough west that there’s nobody around, I dip lower. I run hot, but it’s freezing above the clouds. I don’t like dodging red-eyes, either.

Down here, it’s the perfect temperature at night, just the way I like it. Like rolling to my side in bed and feeling a body, cool and pure as a river flowing down the mountain. 

*

Basilton Pitch made my life a living hell.

He saw right through my brand new uniform and the fancy haircut Davy had paid for. He saw what I was right away - a Dickensian orphan. A street urchin no better than the gum on his shoe.

(Metaphorically. Baz Pitch would never get gum on his shoes.)

It wasn’t until fifth year that I could see through him as easily as he’d seen me. I knew what he was, and I wanted to use it to destroy him.

I followed him everywhere. I spent all day thinking about him. I couldn’t stop myself. I’d never thought so much before about anything.

I went to all his practices and all his matches. I stayed awake till he returned from the Catacombs. I seriously considered following him home over Christmas. In the summers, I imagined him lounging in his opulent manor or laying in the sun on faraway white-sand beaches, living the good life while I wasted away in a care home.

He haunted me like the creature of the night that he was. Though he didn’t have to make any effort to do so - I managed it all by myself. I thought I was in his thrall.

I was, but not in the way that I thought.

*

The lights blind me as soon as they appear above the horizon. I think that the sun somehow rose in the west, at first. But it’s just a city - a gaudy jewel in the desert.

I land just outside city limits and walk until I can hail a cab.

I tell him that I’m looking for Katherine. Somehow, he knows where to go.

Katherine, whoever she is, is a woman of excess. The hotel lobby is swathed in velvet and satin. Black and red everywhere - the colors assault me. I haven’t seen red in a long time. I don’t exactly look in mirrors.

Maybe I should have today. I duck into the restroom and wrangle my hair into something vaguely acceptable. Agatha would nearly approve. Of course, she’s not around to have an opinion.

I notice that I’m wearing a burgundy suit. There’s a shimmer, the faint pattern of scales. I look bizarre, like a primary school painting in red, yellow, and blue.

The lift attendant gives my outfit a once-over and hits the button for the penthouse.

I’m lucky - there’s far fewer rooms on this floor. It’s not difficult to follow the ruckus. I don’t bother knocking.

*

I was so deliriously happy at first that I think I used it all up.

I threw myself into Baz like he was the answer to the questions I’d had my whole life. The solution to every problem and the salve to heal my wounds. 

He wasn’t, of course. It’s too much to ask from someone. Those things have to come from yourself.

It wasn’t that I stopped loving him. I loved him more than life itself, and I knew I would with my dying breath. That was why I had to let him go.

But when he ran away, I couldn’t help it. I followed him.

I dipped too low over the Rockies and ended up with wings full of bullet holes - a terrified rancher with too much firepower, I suppose. I crashed. I went to sleep with the memory of his breaths in my ears.

*

I don’t remember the last time I had an alcoholic drink. Or if I ever did - no, I definitely did. I grimace at the memory.

Still, I head over to the bar because it’s a good spot to survey the crowd. Maybe I’ll find whatever I’m looking for - or at the very least do some entertaining people-watching.

Vampire-watching?

I realise as I scan the room that I’m not sure what he looks like.

I wonder if I smell different to the vampires than a regular Normal. I have no idea what the treaties and laws are these days, but last I recall creatures weren’t welcome in Las Vegas.

I don’t often think things through, though, and I’m not about to start now. I like to dive in snout first and fight my way out if necessary. 

It probably helps that I can breathe fire.

*

I must be dreaming.

I know I am. Simon Snow is long dead. He was reported missing nearly two hundred years ago. (I printed out the notice and I have it folded up in a box next to my bed.)

Bunce and I trekked through America, searching for him, every summer until she died. I finally gave up then. (I still cast finding powerful spells for the next few decades. Until I had to accept that no mortal could have lived for so long.)

This is a Simon Snow clone - something I’m intimately familiar with. He’s more convincing than most, though. He smells like butter left on the stove a little too long. Smoky and sweet and rich. He doesn’t look a day over nineteen, but neither do I.

I don’t think I’ve had sex in about a decade. (It’s not very long, if you’re me.) I haven’t felt that pull lately - haven’t been consumed by the desperate need to be close, to be held and cherished. I still drink occasionally - from men who are spoiling and begging for it when I’m done with them. But just as a treat. Recombinant blood products are much easier, even if the older vampires turn their noses up at them. (Plus, they come in _flavors_. I’m partial to French vanilla, myself.)

This man, though - I could drink from him every day and never get enough.

I haven’t been in love in two hundred years. (That’s a lie. I haven’t been in love with someone who still exists, at least.) The idea makes my heart flutter. 

I’d given up on companionship.

I’m getting ahead of myself, obviously. But it’s just a seed of an idea - one that makes me feel more alive than I have in a while. It doesn’t have to be with this man (although I want it to be - Crowley, I _do_.)

I have matured enough to figure out that dating someone as a replacement for a centuries-old relationship is unhealthy.

Then again, I’m allowed to have a type.

When I look back at him, he’s staring directly at me.

Usually, I’d wait for a Bleeder to come to me. I practically run to him instead.

*

Baz. Baz. That’s Baz.

I’d know him anywhere.

How could I have even imagined forgetting him?

I’ve spent my entire life with him. First, in a room at the top of a tower. Then in my dreams for centuries.

He’s real and he’s here. And he’s racing towards me, weaving between the partygoers with inhuman grace. 

He’s so beautiful.

*

“ _Baz,_ ” the Snow clone chokes out, and my heart stops.

How - it can’t be -

“Simon,” I say, and I close my eyes because if this is a dream, I hope I never wake up.

He’s kissing me. His mouth is hot and tastes like brimstone. I feel like I’m being electrocuted from the inside out. 

We kiss and move against each other until I’m close, and I then have to pull away.

There’s at least a dozen others fucking around us, and normally I don’t mind. But this is different.

I’m too vulnerable. I want to be wrapped up in Snow somewhere just for us. I want this to be only for him. (I want him to be only for me.)

So we stagger to my suite. It’s slow going, both of us unwilling to break away from each other’s mouths and hands long enough to open the door. He flips off the lights and I turn on the bedside lamp. He puts on a song I used to play on the violin when we were in school. 

I clutch the sheets as he slides into me. 

I feel like I’m twenty again. I don’t hold back the tears. I don’t hear what I’m saying, but then Simon is crying too. “Yes, Baz,” he says over and over. “It’s really me.”

*

“I’ll take you anywhere,” Simon says. “I’ll stay here or I’ll go anywhere with you, if you’ll have me.”

I’ve long ago lost track of time. (Time is very different for creatures like us.) I just know that we’ve racked up an ungodly bill with room service, that we’ve fucked a thousand times, that we’ve talked and cried and apologised so much that it finally feels like the weight of the last two hundred years is lighter.

Enough that I’m not afraid when I say, “England. Take me back to England.”

His smile is so bright that I could burst into flames right here. I wouldn’t mind. I’d be the world’s luckiest pile of ashes.

“Anything for you, darling.”

We take a plane across the Atlantic despite Simon’s insistence that he could fly us there. (I’d most definitely freeze.) But when we reach Pitch Manor - it’s a small museum now, which I donated most of the funds for - I finally allow him to take me flying.

*

This feels _right_.

I usually feel like an imposter dragon, but right now, with my wings spread all the way, all twenty feet of them, and the wind on my scales, and hot air puffing from my snout - I can’t deny that I’m one in all the ways that matter.

I think we can get him a saddle and I can take him anywhere in the world. He’s still a mage - he can manage the weatherisation spells if he really tries.

I’ve never been anywhere, honestly, and even if I had it’s all very different now. That’s okay, because Baz has traveled to every single country and speaks forty-five languages.

We climb the ruins of the Burj Khalifa. I fly over Mount Everest, and we stop to have dinner with him. (Well, when he’s a tall Nepali man with a love of goat curry, and not a dragon that swallows yaks whole.) We visit the Nordic ocean levees, and swim through the lost city of New York.

In the end, we return to Pitch Manor.

*

Simon Snow is lying on the sofa.

The same sofa we kissed on that first night, in fact. It’s in remarkable condition. (Magickal preservation techniques.)

I remember this Snow well. At least then he had to walk from the bedroom to the living room to lie down. Now, he stumbles out of bed in the afternoon and immediately collapses on the couch. I bring him food he won’t eat. He says he doesn’t need to, that he went without for two hundred years.

“You were in hibernation then.”

Simon stares into the distance. He flinches at my touch.

“I wish I still was.” He squeezes his eyes shut. “I wish I’d never woken up.”

I listen to the sounds of his breathing as I lie awake at night. He’s usually hooked up to the VR playing some game or another until the wee hours of the morning. I get my fill of looking at him while he’s unaware that I’m doing it.

I have to be careful. If I crowd him, I’ll end up sleeping in the guest room.

I wish he’d get out of the house sometimes. I wish he’d spread his wings and fly above the forest like he did when we were happy.

But I’m afraid that once he takes flight, he’ll never come back.

*

I wish I were dead.

I should be. I’ve cheated death a thousand times, but never quite like this.

I’ve been lonely, but never so completely.

“You’re not alone,” Baz says. I feel guilty at the desperation in his voice. “You have me.”

History repeats itself - and that’s exactly what we are. Ancient history.

I pack my things. There isn’t much. 

I hope he got some closure. (I hope he doesn’t forget me.)

*

I find him three days later, in a scorched clearing in the forest. Fast asleep, a big scaly thing.

I sit down next to him. I lean against his slippery, soft body.

 _I’m sorry_ , I want to say. Sorry for whatever made you stop loving me. Then and now. If he’s leaving, I want him to set me on fire first.

I’m not a dramatic teenager anymore - I know that life goes on. I’ve lived without him once before; I can do it again.

(I summon a flame in my palm anyway.)

*

When I wake up, Baz is in my arms.

I squeeze him tight - too tight. He wakes up and pulls away. He takes my entire heart with him.

“I got a job,” he says finally. His voice is trembling. “At Watford.”

I swallow. I won’t cry - he deserves that much.

“Simon,” he says. “Will you give this one last chance? Will you come with me to Watford?”

This time, I don’t hesitate.

“ _Yes,_ ” I say, and I’m crying so hard that I think I could have raised the sea levels all over again. “Baz, I’m sorry. I can’t lose you. Not again. I’m an idiot --”

“No, you’re not,” he says forcefully. “I’m sorry. I’ve had a long time to get used to the way things are now, but you haven’t. I shouldn’t have tried to push you.”

We don’t even make it out of the forest. He pins me against a tree, and I beg and beg until he gives me what I’ve waited centuries for. He sinks his teeth into my jugular and fucks me until I’m just a hollowed-out shell of love and lust and magic. Until I’m floating, like that night in our room so long ago.

When I open my eyes, all I can see are stars.

*

Baz teaches Magickal History at Watford. We move into Ebb’s cottage - it’s deep inside the Wavering Wood now, which is ten times larger than it was when I was young but somehow still the same distance from the school. I tend to the goats and grow fruits and vegetables for the students. (I've always got an impressive harvest of sour cherries.)

I still feel like I’m missing a piece of myself, but I think I always will. It’s hard, being here, in the place I used to call home that’s completely foreign to me now, in a place where I was brimming with magic, when I don’t have it anymore.

Baz teaches all day and grades or plans lessons in the evenings, so I spend a lot of time alone with my thoughts. For once it’s not awful. I finally get the chance to hear myself think.

I realise that even though I’m not the Chosen One any longer, I need a purpose. So I start reading the news. Then I start making notes and downloading maps and talking to mages and magickal creatures around the world.

I take VR courses to become a nurse. The dryads pour their magic into the land so that I can reap a bounty of food and herbs and medicinal plants, and Baz buys what I can’t bring forth from the earth. I build myself a dragon-sized backpack, and I fly towards war and famine, and I care for people as best as I can.

In the summers we leave Ebb’s cottage and return to Pitch Manor. Baz throws grand parties and the whole magickal world comes to gawk at us. ( _”Because we’re carnival attractions. Magickal anomalies,” I say. “Because we’re better looking and more in love than anyone has the right to be, and they can’t take their eyes off of us,” he counters._ ) 

Some people don’t gawk. Some stay, and talk, and come back again. We have _friends_ \- many generations younger than we are, but we love them all the same. And then one day, we have a child.

Her name is Penelope Natasha Pitch, and she changes our lives.

She’s not a mage or a dragon or a vampire - just a child who didn’t have anywhere else to go. But we don’t want her to be. Instead, we live our lives to the fullest together. We laugh and love and our family grows, until we have children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and -- 

She ages, like Normals do. Once she’s eighteen, we talk to her for a long time, about crossing over and eternal life and getting Turned, but only if she wants it beyond a shadow of a doubt.

She doesn’t. She’s sure of it and she stays sure of it, even as her back starts to hurt, and white hairs start to sprout, and her joints begin to ache. That’s when we know that we can’t go on like this forever.

“I’ve always said this would end in flames,” Baz jokes at Christmas dinner, and I kick him in the shin because _the whole family is here_. (They don’t mind. They keep saying that ten lifetimes married to the same person sounds like a nightmare.) (It definitely isn’t.)

One day, we’ll cross to the other side, and we’ll do it together. But for now - well. For now, there are mouths to feed and presents to open. An anniversary to celebrate, friends and family to meet, work to be done. And somehow, despite everything the world has thrown at us, there’s a grey-eyed vampire in my bed. One I never thought I’d get to keep. So I don’t mind sticking around just a bit longer.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Say hi on Tumblr - im-gettingby.


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